There were shouts behind him in the camp, and he saw motion about the
borrowed tents of the Raydowers.
A huge, gleaming thing sank down to the plain on a cushion of smoke and
flame. The fires disappeared as it touched ground. A moment later, the
thunder died out.
Yorgh became aware of someone yanking his arm.
"Come on!" yelled little Puko. "I have a wolly for you. You can flee to
the mountains!"
Yorgh looked around, and most of the talk and bustle ceased. People,
finding themselves still alive, stopped to stare at Yorgh. He saw a
group hurrying over from the Raydower camp.
Why don't they look to Tefior or Jayn? he wondered peevishly.
The first words Jayn spoke when she panted up with Ueln and others of
her people were, "You were wrong to go up there!"
"I do not think well of it," Tefior agreed sadly.
"This is what comes of violating the shrine!" shouted one of the
Raydowers. "The spirits of the Old Ones have come to avenge themselves
upon us all!"
"No!" roared Yorgh.
He stared around at them, then out across the plain where the great,
gleaming thing stood upright with wisps of smoke curling up from the
grass at its base.
"I brought it upon us; I will go!"
Jayn and Ueln stared at him with pale, sorrowful faces. Kwint fingered
his bow, and seemed about to step forward. Puko did, but Tefior grabbed
him by the hair.
Yorgh turned and walked slowly away.
"Yorgh! Wait!"
Vaneen ran after him.
"We'll go together! I was there with you!"
"No!" he groaned. "Jayn, she went because I took her. Kwint! Ueln! Hold
her!"
He broke away and ran toward the thing on the plain, not thinking, not
even hoping. The voices behind him died away.
After he had covered a quarter of a mile, he noticed that the metal
thing was like the ships of the Sea People in some ways. It was
rounded, like a hull, and its upthrust bow--
To his amazement, there were four men standing under it when he
arrived. Yorgh gaped at their queer clothes.
"Well, look at him!" said one of them with a strange accent. "Is that
what's been sending out a repetitive message that's well over two
hundred years old? I thought the plague wiped this planet clean."
"Man!" exclaimed the one with the close-cropped red hair. "If we can
find out why not, maybe we can stop it wherever it still pops up in the
galaxy!"
It was late afternoon when Yorgh ambled back into camp.
A great sigh went up from the waiting groups when they saw that he was
smiling.
"They are men!" he shouted. "Sons of the Old Ones--as are we! Tefior,
Jayn, when I have told you, this will be a night for a feast!"
He told them of the strange men who said they came from the Terran
Colonial Patrol in answer to a message from The World, which had long
been shunned as a dead colony, dead of a plague still known among the
stars.
He told how the Terrans had taken blood from his arm and looked at it
in a queer machine, whereupon they had grown talkative and excited.
"They said they will send people to teach us the forgotten ways of the
Old Ones, because we are the first they have found who do not die of
the sickness," he concluded. "Just for bringing them kromps and other
animals to help cure the sickness, they will see that we have all we
need to stand beside them, as brothers."
And he told how one of the Terrans had knocked a kromp unconscious with
a small machine in his hand, to get some of its blood.
"I will show you," he grinned, thinking of a tremendous joke. "Where is
Moyt?"
The others pushed the tall, blond Moyt forward.
"Is there any reason why you would not like to marry Jayn, who is the
first of the Raydower women?" Yorgh asked.
"I--" began Moyt suspiciously, and stiffened as Yorgh pressed the
trigger of the Terran stunner he held inside his tunic.
Moyt got control of his knees and straightened up as Yorgh turned off
the power.
He started to open his mouth angrily, and Yorgh stunned him again. Moyt
slumped to his knees beside Jayn.
The Raydower woman's lips curved in a thoughtful smile, and she reached
out to run a finger through Moyt's hair. The man had changed his mind
about protesting by the time the second shock had worn off.
Then Yorgh sat down to answer question after question while
preparations for the night's feast went on. The men gathered and voted
that messengers should be sent to the Sea People to tell of what had
happened. Someone shouted Yorgh's name to be chief of the three tribes,
and the cry was taken up over his protests.
"Well, I'll take a walk and think about it," he said finally, and
strolled up the creek for a breather.
In the quiet of the trees, he shook his head to see if he would wake
from the dream, but the only result was that he heard voices.
He lengthened his stride and caught up with a group of the young women.
"Where are you going?" he asked amiably.
"We were going swimming before the feast," answered pert Ahnee, "but
if there is to be a ponadu named Yorgh in the woods--"
"I won't bother you," he grinned, "if you will tell me where Vaneen is."
"She went ahead alone when we stopped to hear what all the shouting was
for. She is anxious to try the new dress of white wool that Jayn gave
her."
"Oh," said Yorgh, wrinkling his brow. "Well, in that case, I must ask
you girls to find another part of the creek."
"What!" cried Ahnee. "Yorgh, you oughtn't!"
"The Raydower elder said a marriage spell over us, didn't he? Now, will
you go, or must I show you what happened to Moyt?"
"We'll go!" squealed Ahnee hastily, as the other girls faded back from
beside her. "But it was said that you did not mean to hold her to that
foreign ceremony."
"I must obey everyone's laws," said Yorgh, "now that I am to be chief
of all the tribes."
He thought he heard splashing a little way up the creek, and grinned to
himself at the vision in his mind.
"But it is well known that you told Tefior--"
"Argh!" said Yorgh. "It is well known that I seldom speak in earnest!"